Don't make me frog it. You won't like me when I frog it.

Finally! Finished filet crochet stole.

Wow, it’s been a really long time since my last post, hasn’t it? In my defence, I haven’t had much time or energy for, well, anything really! We moved house three weeks ago and the new place has needed a lot of work, not that I actually did much more than supervise as Baby BAM is due in just over two weeks!

I am ENORMOUS! I’ve been very lucky, with just the usual nausea, heartburn and tiredness to content with, but now I’ve reached that stage where I’m just too damn big to do much. There’s not long to go now though, and both me and the Mister can’t wait to meet our little one!

I haven’t finished many projects lately, but there is one that I’ve resisted blogging about since June! It was a present for my little sister’s birthday, so I had to hold off until I had a chance to give it to her (and I didn’t want to leave it to the Post Office to lose).

This Heart Stole was my first attempt at filet crochet, and the pattern was in issue 52 of Inside Crochet Magazine.

This was after blocking, which really helped to open it up, but I still found it difficult to take a decent picture (the photo is wonky, not the shawl – honest!). It’s not exactly easy to crawl around on the floor to arrange it at the moment! A picture with a helpfully nosy cat helps indicate the size though…

As you can now see, it’s pretty big! It worked up quite quickly, even taking into account where I made mistakes and had to frog a couple of large sections. The hearts didn’t always seem very heart shaped when I was working on them, but that’s often the case when you see a pattern too close for too long. I’m glad I kept my nerve because they are definitely hearts now!

It was a near thing, but there even turned out to be the right number of them!

I think it was well worth waiting until I could give it to her in person as she threw herself into an impromptu photo shoot. Unfortunately I didn’t have my good camera with me, so the pictures aren’t great…

And things soon got a bit silly…

The poses got increasingly ridiculous, but my crappy little camera couldn’t really keep up! I was glad that she was so enthusiastic about her present though.

Hopefully I’ll manage to finish a few more things for the baby before she arrives. At this point knitting and crochet are about the only useful things I can still do!